A counter-manifesto?
I may make myself a little unpopular here, considering the popularity of this manifesto that appeared a couple of days ago. Give it a read here: http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/games/manifesto.html

Bear in mind I haven't worked in the "big budget" game industry since the LAST hardware revolution, but I left that carrying many of the same frustrations voiced here. But while it sounds all nice and neat from an idealogical perspective, it's flawed (and it's meant to be - it's a rant, and rants aren't usually intended to be rational, well-thought-out evaluations).

So here are my thoughts:

AI
AI can be made mercilessly competent. In Void War, I had to dumb down the AI just to make the game emotely fun. (Well, okay, they still navigate around obstacles like a drunk driver sometimes, but they can shoot a flying gnat out of the air at 800 meters if I let them...) If you get to close range, you can see the AI deliberately TRY to miss. And that's the trick. It's making the AI play stupid more believably.

Players don't want AI to be better, generally. They want the AI to put on a better show of *trying* to be better while the player clobbers them. They don't like it when the AI is obviously letting them win. That's a really tough thing to design, because the player wants to feel like he's so freaking hot-bananas that the enemies can't touch him, when in reality if the AI were all real players teamed up against him, he'd have been dead before he got two feet inside the compound.

A Genre of Game That We've Never Seen Before
It's been done. Lots of times. And the players never did see them because nobody paid any attention to them, and they died without ever appearing on anyone's radar. With few exceptions. Go out to the Monthly Round-Ups at Game Tunnel and check them out. Yeah, there are a lot of "me too" products and remakes of old classics, but about once a month you also have some really bizarre, weird concept that is praised all-to-briefly for its originality and then forgotten.

Originality is rarely rewarded financially. People claim they want something they've never seen before, but they usually vote with their wallets for something familiar and comfortable with some cool new features to freshen it up. Sad but true. Hey, I also bought (and enjoy) Unreal Tournament 2004... though I also have UT 2003, UT, Unreal, and Unreal 2. The most original title I bought last year was Orbz.

Adult Games?
Those, too, are out there. For the PC. And mods for existing games that go to extremes of tastelessness. Anyone else remember "Custer's Revenge" for the Atari 2600?

Save Points
AMEN! There's a point where preventing the step-save-step-save "cheat" becomes a frustrating way to force players to re-play the same boring content they've already passed to extend the length of the game. Most console games go way beyond that point. If I have to repeat the same content more than twice - or repeat more than five minutes of content even once - I am not a happy camper.

Invisible and Arbitrary Barriers
Amen. I've been guilty of this in the past (though I have usually at least tried to explain it). Sometimes the invisible barrier in an area that few players will ever go is preferable to having some great big visible unrealistic and obvious barrier that everyone will see - or the seething hatred and screams of "bugs" that you'd get if you didn't restrict movement at all. Sometimes it's just the lesser of several evils.

Unfortunately, the reality of game programming is that you spend WAY more of your time dealing with exceptional cases than with the core parts of the game. But I am still in agreement in principle. Arbitrary barriers do seem lazy and break whatever weak illusions you have created. The less of them, the better.

Immersion-Annihilating Contrivances
If only we had holodecks instead of a 17" - 19" monitor to present immersion...

Of course, then you'd have that annoying "Arch" and the ship's captain breaking the immersion and calling you to report for duty and everything too, so there'd still be plenty to complain about. It seems that the better you make your graphics, the more noticeable the imperfections and faults become. You get people complaining about all kinds of things in the 3D world that they wouldn't have thought twice about in a 2D game.

I'm not saying this is WRONG - we should always strive to do better. But I will say that immersion is of a far lower priority than having fun, bug-free gameplay that provides you with plenty of feedback as a player.

BS on Difficulty
I'm mainly in agreement, though I'm not sure that "Ammo Starvation" is necessarily evil. It really depends on how the game uses it. If the game allows you to succeed in many other ways, so that shooting the enemies are only one of many options (and more the option of last resort), I don't see a problem with it.

But there's a point where it can be far more frustrating than fun. And keeping track of your number of bullets is only occasionally fun.

Jumping Puzzles in FPS Games
That's why I so rarely play FPS games anymore. The last time I really enjoyed a jumping puzzle in an FPS game was in Jumping Flash for the Playstation 1 back in 1995. And that game was really a jumping game with (I think) FPS elements in it.


The Final Analysis
People vote with their wallets. That has a much louder voice than any rant. The fastest growing demographic in the game market right now is women aged 40+. When they started shelling out significant dollars in game purchases for games THEY liked, you'd better believe game developers and publishers (and yes, even console manufacturers) are starting to take notice. Deny your support to the games that continue to irritate you, and throw your support behind those quirky, off-beat games that AAA publishers are loathe to touch (Katamari notwithstanding).

And whatever you do, don't restrict your search to big-budget, AAA games that are scientifically designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator!

Labels: Game Design

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 1:56 PM (Permalink)